Project “Speak With Purpose”

Project website: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/kotodama-fruit-juice/

Pittsburgh, PA – Fall, 2o13

DATA2014-FINALISTBADGEPublicity:

• Featured in “Through the Wormhole” with Morgan Freeman on Discovery Science Channel

• Presented at INTETAIN 2014

• DATA Awards 2014 finalist

 

My roles: Producer, Sound Designer

Responsibilities:

  • Managed a team of 5 people
  • Arranged outsource work
  • Conducted Scrum meetings
  • Devised the schedule
  • Participated in playtests
  • Set priorities
  • Prepared project presentations
  • Arranged external/client meetings
  • Overviewed project scope
  • Sound design of the project
  • Recorded voice-overs

Project length: 1 semester (15 weeks)

“Speak with Purpose” is an applied research project created by team Kotodama Fruit Juice from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, advised by Brenda Bakkar-Harger and Shirley Yee. Tasked with exploring “stories that listen”, the five technologists that make up Kotodama Fruit Juice are using advanced speech recognition and narrative trickery to discover what possibilities exist for the future of entertainment and natural modes of interaction.

The ability to establish meaningful relationships and exchanges through one’s speech is a core tenant of the communicative experience, and current attempts to mimic the process synthetically are limited to practical, industrial spaces instead of our living rooms.

As an implementation of the research, the team has created an interactive experience where the player is immerged in a virtual comedy club, while a stand-up comedian interacts with his audience during his performance and asks player questions. Depending on the answers and general behavior of the player during the performance, the story that the comedian tells changes, as do his posture, mood condition and the ending of the experience.

Kotodama Fruit Juice is thinking outside the (juice) box to provide realistic, meaningful interaction and story, and all you’ll have to do is speak with purpose.

Goals of the project:

  • Development of an emotive interactive experience, where the player’s speech serves as the main interaction and is meaningful to the gameplay.
  • Research of current technology possibilities and limitations in the field of speech recognition.

Platform: PC

Additional Hardware: Oculus Rift, Headset with a microphone

Team: Dilara Semerci, Heather Martin, Chenxin Momo Jiao, Allen Tingley

Advisors: Brenda Harger, Shirley Yee